


dad time

by AlmondRose



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: 5 + 1 Things, Bruce is a good dad, Fluff, Gen, HE LOVES HIS KIDS OKAY!!!!!!!!!!, Humor, Misunderstandings, The JL don't know what's happening ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-09-28 23:50:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20434550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlmondRose/pseuds/AlmondRose
Summary: five times the justice league misinterpreted batman's actions + one time they absolutely did not





	dad time

**Author's Note:**

> based off a tumblr post i made (https://sqoiler.tumblr.com/post/187307971591/sqoiler-sqoiler-bruce-is-doing-a-justice) about how bruce keeps bringing his kids into JL stuff bc he loves them and is trying to show off how skilled they are. 
> 
> also timelines are possibly wack because i do what i want and this is an au or whatever where nobody in the league knows who batman is/knows anything about batman. hope u enjoy!

  
  
Hal is hardly paying attention to the meeting, as the big guns are discussing stuff like going undercover and Hal isn’t really one for going undercover. Besides, the League usually just needs him for space stuff. 

But then Diana turns, raising her voice to address the whole group, and Hal automatically tunes back in. You can’t just  _ ignore  _ Wonder Woman. 

“Is anyone here good at acrobatics?” she asks, and Hal exchanges a look with Barry across the table. Hal can  _ fly _ , sure. Aerobatics? Piece of cake.  _ Acrobatics?  _ No way in hell. 

He looks at Ollie, ‘cause that seems like something Ollie can do, but Ollie looks just as unwilling as Barry to offer himself up for the mission. 

From somewhere near the back of the room, Batman clears his throat. 

“Batman”, not Steve or Chris or whatever, just “Batman”, because Hal sure as fuck doesn’t know his real name and he doesn’t really think anyone else in the room does, either. 

Anyway, Hal turns to face him, trying to imagine Batman doing acrobatics. 

“I know somebody,” Batman says, his voice low and growly and utterly flat. 

Sure, of course, he  _ knows somebody.  _

“Somebody” turns out to be a teenaged kid in a mask, one Hal has heard vague rumors of but never met or seen before. 

“Robin,” Diana says. “If you aren’t up for this--”

“He can do it,” Batman says, his voice firm and leaving no room for argument, and Hal watches from the comms as Robin does, indeed, commit acrobatics. The kid is graceful and freakishly good and he breaks into the building easily, letting Barry and Diana and Ollie inside and helping them out with the rest of the mission. 

Batman isn’t one for, like, talking, but he still says, “Told you,”  _ suuuuper  _ smugly and Hal’s mouth drops open. 

That bastard! He’s bragging! It was Batman’s idea to use Robin and Batman trained Robin so he only did this for a glorified pat on the back! 

Jesus!

\----

Batman gets hurt in an incident in Gotham, but the League needs a detective. 

Barry, although good at his job, isn’t quite the detective they need, so Kal goes ahead and calls up Batman anyway. Batman sends a teenager. 

Robin--a new Robin, not the same Robin that Oliver remembers Batman calling in for the acrobatics mission--is serious but pokes fun of Guy. Ollie laughs, glad that it’s not him being made fun of, and they follow the kid around. Ollie feels kind of dumb after Robin solves and explains what happened, and then after Robin leaves them when the case is done, he and Dinah accidently stumble upon Kal talking to Batman via video chat in the Watchtower’s lunch room. 

“How’d he do?” Batman asks. Ollie can see that Batman’s wearing his cowl, despite the fact that Kal  _ probably  _ knows Batman’s identity and Batman is, you know, injured and allegedly off-duty. 

“He did fine,” Kal says. “Figured out the case in no time.”

“Good,” Batman says, and he sounds smug. “Those were the intended results.”

Woah, is Batman bragging? 

“Is he bragging?” Ollie whispers. Dinah shrugs.

“Maybe?” she says. 

“You taught him well,” Kal says. 

“I know I did,” Batman says, and --

“Okay, he’s definitely bragging,” Dinah says. “What the hell? I thought he was more humble than that.”

“I didn’t,” Ollie mutters. He thinks of how  _ little  _ he really knows about Batman. “Didn’t think he’d use a kid as an outlet to brag, but didn’t he do the same thing with that other Robin?”

“I wasn’t there,” Dinah reminds him. Kal and Batman are still talking in the other room, although Kal can probably hear them. That thought reminds Ollie to shut up, and he drags Dinah away, deciding not to ruminate on the incident too much. 

\----

“Although Dinah and I are a sufficient team, a third member would be appreciated,” Diana says, and Arthur looks around at the League members around him. For Dinah and Diana’s mission, they need women fighters. Arthur thinks about Mera, but she’s busy and he’s supposed to go to Atlantis that night, anyway, and would like to be with her. 

None of the other women in the League--Zatanna and Hawkgirl--would work for the mission. Hawkgirl’s wings are too conspicuous and Zatanna, although a capable person, wouldn’t be able to infiltrate the League of Shadows as they infiltrate the Amazons. 

The only person Arthur can really think of in the League who  _ could  _ be able to infiltrate is Batman, but he’s not going to be able to pass for a lady, even a bulky one. 

“I can do it,” Batman says anyway, without even pretending to think about it, and Arthur’s eyebrows climb up his forehead. 

Zatanna looks like she’s going to say something, but instead Batman keeps talking. 

“She can meet you here in three hours,” he says. 

She? She who?

‘She’ turns out to be Black Bat, who shows up in yoga pants and a domino mask. She’s small but there’s something powerful about her, and Batman invites anyone to spar with her if they doubt her ability. 

Nobody does, although Arthur thinks that Hal’s tempted.

Either way, Batman’s words seem a little overconfident. 

“He’s such a braggart,” Arthur hears Hal whisper irritably to Ollie and Barry. “Everything he does is like ‘look at me! my people are the best people ‘cause they’re MY people!’ Give me a break.”

“How does he even have so many sidekicks? Is he a teenager magnet?” Barry asks, his voice equally low. 

“He doesn’t seem like one to be good with kids so I don’t even know,” Ollie says. “I mean, Speedy and Red Arrow are my  _ kids.  _ But can you imagine  _ Batman  _ with a  _ son? _ ”

“Are you implying Black Bat could be Batman’s  _ daughter?”  _ Hal snorts, and the trio laugh. Arthur leaves, not one to gossip and also definitely one to return home to his wife in a timely manner, but privately he agrees. 

\----

Barry’s not really judgey, really he’s  _ not,  _ but when Batman brings in a tiny, itty bitty  _ child  _ for their mission..well...that seems like a bit much, even for Batman. 

Sure, they needed someone small and pointy for ventilation purposes and fighting on the other end, but they could’ve called Ray or something, Barry thinks. But no, Batman  _ insisted  _ on bringing in the kid. 

Not the new Robin, who seems even smaller than any other Robins Batman had dragged along. Even the acrobat Robin in the distant past seemed bigger than this little….hedgehog of a child. Wally and Bart had seemed small, but not  _ this  _ small. 

The kid doesn’t say anything, just does his job and then smacks Kal’s hand away when he tries to ruffle Robin’s hair. 

“He’s pretty good,” Dinah tells Batman at the end of it all, when Batman’s about to zeta away and Robin already has. 

“I know,” Batman says, and then he leaves. Dinah looks at Ollie, who looks at Hal, who looks at Barry. 

Not this again, Barry thinks, except he thinks Hal’s anti-Batman tirade probably has merit, at least in this matter. Why else would Batman bring in all his sidekicks at every possible time, if not to brag about his own abilities? Sometimes they don’t even really need them, like today. They could’ve called Ray, they just didn’t, because Batman always needs to have a finger in everything. He’s like a puppet master, Barry thinks. A big, scary puppet master. 

\----

Billy hasn’t been in the JL very long, not like Hal or Ollie or Diana or Batman, but he’s eager to be here. This mission is his first undercover mission, and he’s excited. 

He’s uniquely qualified for undercover things, he thinks gleefully, then he remembers that the whole Billy-Batson-Is-Only-Fourteen thing is a secret. 

“It’s a female juvenile detention center,” Kal says. “We can either be wardens or prisoners, although I think a mix of both would be most effective.”

Billy looks at the League, curious about who they could use. He thinks that Ollie or Barry could be good jailers, or maybe John. Not Kal, obviously, because his face is exposed. If it was an  _ anyone  _ juvie, Billy would offer himself up--age be darned. But it’s for girls only. 

He looks at the girls, trying to think who could pass for someone young. Not really Dinah, who also doesn’t have a secret identity. Maybe Zatanna could use a spell? But nobody’s in the right age range. Everyone looks around at each other uncomfortably, except Batman, who’s on his tablet, not even paying attention. 

That makes Billy mad, ‘cause people who don’t pay attention are annoying, and besides,  _ Superman  _ is speaking. Doesn’t Batman know that Superman’s the coolest person ever?

Speaking of that, Billy realizes he’s tuned out. He goes back in in time to hear Kal assign Ollie and Hal to be jailers. 

  
“What about a prisoner? We just gonna forgo all that?” Barry asks, leaning back in his chair. Batman stands up and flips his tablet around, revealing a picture of a girl with blonde hair. 

“Stephanie Brown, daughter of Arthur Brown, the criminal Cluemaster,” he says. “Age sixteen. Problems with authorities. Anger issues. Set Riddler’s hideout on fire when he refused access to her father. Arrested on counts of breaking and entering, charged for arson.”

He sits back down. Billy stares at him. What?

A few days later, Ollie and Hal take Stephanie Brown into the jail, and Billy watches the security cams with Barry and Dinah and Batman. When Batman steps out, Billy says, watching Stephanie get into a fight with one of her fellow inmates, “I don’t get it.”

“Oh jeez, rookie,” Dinah says. “You don’t know--Batman does this thing, sometimes, where he brags about his own skills by intervening with the League’s mission, putting his own people in.”

“But this girl’s a real criminal,” Billy says, biting his lip. Ollie and a real guard are dragging Stephanie and the other girl apart. 

“Nah,” Barry says. “Stephanie Brown  _ is _ probably a real criminal, but that’s not Stephanie Brown.”

“What?” Billy asks, finally looking away from the feed. 

“It’s just some girl who  _ looks _ sort of like Stephanie Brown,” Barry says, waving his hands around. “In real life, that girl’s some sort of ninja or something. A bat-ninja.”

“There’s countless little Bats swarming around Gotham,” Dinah says. “We might not’ve even heard of her before, or she might be Batgirl or something.”

“Who knows,” Barry says. 

Then, Batman comes back in and sits down. He makes Barry report on what he missed, and Billy ponders. 

After the mission, Batman uses the Watchtower screens to video someone he calls “Spoiler”. She has on a full face mask and a purple hood. 

“Good job,” he says. Spoiler gives him a thumbs up, and Billy leaves the room, shocked. So Barry and Dinah were right, and it was all just Batman being manipulative of the whole situation. 

\------

Their next mission is in caves with technology dampening materials in the walls. The caves are also impossibly dark, and Zatanna’s busy with her own League, so they can’t call her for a light source. 

Diana goes over this with Clark, and he looks at her with a little gleam in his eye. 

She smiles back at him. 

  
The next day, they present the mission in front of the League. They could, easily, just tell Bruce beforehand and just ask the League to come, but Diana and Clark and Bruce have had this ritual for years and Diana isn’t about to break it.

“So,” she says at the end of the presentation. “Does anyone know a meta who can create us a light source?”

She looks around, as a pretense. Nobody looks at her, until she looks at Bruce, who half stands. She knows, even though he’s behind her, that Clark is smiling. 

She and Clark can never tell him, but this little habit of Bruce’s?  _ Adorable.  _

“I’ve got it,” Bruce grunts, as if Diana can’t see how his mouth is twitching to fight back a smile, as if Clark doesn’t tell her the second the meeting’s over how Bruce’s heartbeat  _ sped up  _ because he was so excited. 

Duke Thomas is a delightful young man, and Diana thoroughly enjoys the mission in his company. She also enjoys how when they go to bed, Bruce makes sure Duke is near him and after the fight is very concerned about his health. 

Duke is sent home, and Bruce and Diana sit in the senior lounge, the one the others don’t know about. 

“Hal is complaining about you again,” Clark says, coming into the room. He takes his seat on the other side of Diana. The chairs aren’t strictly assigned to a certain person, but Diana’s never sat in a different one, in over a decade at the League. 

“He always is,” Bruce says. 

“He doesn’t understand why you bring your kids in,” Diana says, and she sips her hot chocolate. 

“He doesn’t need to,” Bruce says. 

“Of course not,” Diana says, and she and Clark make eye contact. 

If it truly was just a case of Bruce bragging about his own skill, Diana wouldn’t let him keep bringing people in. Clark wouldn’t stand for it, either. In fact, Diana thinks if it was anything other than Bruce being incredibly proud of his kids and wanting to spend more time with them...well, this routine would’ve ended years ago. 

But all it is is a father trying to show of his kids, the best way he can, and so Diana and Clark let it slide, and even encourage it. 

  
Besides, it really  _ is  _ adorable. 

**Author's Note:**

> steph: [goes undercover as herself]
> 
> (no jason bc i feel like it wouldn't make sense for red hood to be there & i couldn't work out a scenario for robin)
> 
> thanks for reading! comments & kudos always enjoyed & ;3


End file.
